Those We Lost

Michael Joseph Daly, 83, died July 25 of pancreatic cancer in his home in Fairfield, Connecticut. A lieutenant and later a captain in the Army's Third Infantry Division, he was awarded the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman on August 23, 1945. Credited with single-handedly fighting off and killing fifteen Germans as well as demolishing three machine-gun emplacements - one from ten yards away - during the battle for Nuremberg in the Second World War, he was evacuated the day after the heroic event after sustaining injuries from a bullet to the face in a separate firefight. He was also awarded three Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts during his time in the army. On the day after Daly was awarded his Medal of Honor, a parade was held in Fairfield for both Daly and his father, a colonel who had been injured in France.

Daly was born in New York City in 1926, the son of a highly decorated WWI veteran. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point but did not graduate, instead enlisting in the Army as a private. He worked as a salesman for an oil company and as a real estate investor after the war.

Daly leaves behind his wife, Margaret Wallace Daly, a son, Michael, and a daughter, Deirdre Daly, as well as two sisters, a stepson and stepdaughter, and three grandsons.

Joseph Dwyer

Pfc. Joseph Dwyer, 31 years old, died on June 28 in North Carolina in the tragic aftermath of his time in Iraq, another casualty of a war that the American public has long lost faith in.

Dwyer enlisted as an Army medic right after 9/11 and suddenly became the face of America's heroism in 2003, at the beginning of the invasion, when a famous picture of Dwyer carrying a small Iraqi boy to safety was plastered in newspapers, TV footage, and magazine covers.

With a brother in the NYPD and another serving in the U.S. Air Force, Dwyer felt compelled to join the Army two days after 9/11, needing to do something to protect his family and his country. When he came home to El Paso, Texas a few months later, he was a changed man. Paranoid and gripped with fear and shock from his experience, he began what would become years of sporadic treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and, eventually, addiction. He became a Baptist, trying to find peace in scripture, but also sought comfort from drinking and inhaling spray fumes from cans of solvent. His wife eventually left him, afraid to expose herself and their young daughter any longer to his delusional and violent episodes. Despite countless efforts from his friends and parents to help him recover from the war, there seemed to be no cure. In October 2005, after an attempted intervention by friends failed, Dwyer shot up his apartment in a fit of delusion, insisting he could tell the SWAT team where the Iraqis were. He was arrested but discharged after the incident, and eventually moved to Pinehurst, North Carolina.

On June 28, police discovered Joseph Dwyer alone in his apartment, surrounded by pill bottles and aerosol cans. He was already dying.

Close Army friends expressed frustration with the military for allowing Dwyer to slip through the cracks of programs designed to help veterans in emotional recovery post-deployment. Dwyer had recently begun peer counseling with a fellow Iraq veteran who could relate to Dwyer's fear and trauma, the only treatment that seemed to help, but he was already too far gone. Dwyer was included in Irish America's Top 100 Irish Americans of the Year list in 2004 for his contributions to public service.

David Herbert Greene

David Herbert Greene died July 9 of pneumonia at the age of 94 in Boynton Beach, Florida. A professor at New York University for almost forty years, Greene was a well-recognized scholar of Irish literature credited by some with pioneering the field in American education.

Born in Boston in 1913, Greene earned three degrees from Harvard's literature department over four short years between 1936 and 1939. After accomplishing his Ph.D. there, he served as a Navy intelligence officer in Britain during World War II, then was hired as an English professor at NYU. Officially retiring in 1979, Greene went on to work as an emeritus professor there for six more years.

Greene made a name for himself through several books including J.M. Synge: 1871-1909, an authorized biography written with Edward M. Stephens. He also worked on television and edited An Anthology of Irish Literature. Three years ago Greene donated to NYU decades of correspondence with Irish playwright Sean O'Casey, the result of a friendship begun when Greene was a Harvard student in the 1930s.

David Greene is survived by his wife, formerly Catherine Healy, to whom he had been married for sixty-nine years, a son, three daughters, four grandchildren, and a great-grandson.

Red Foley

Red Foley, a scorer in major league baseball for nearly four decades, died July 7 at age 79 in Flushing, Queens. He scored games from 1966 to 2002, and worked in ten World Series between 1981 and 2001, a record number. Foley also wrote sports stories for The Daily News for 34 years, until 1981, and a question-and-answer column in the New York Post after that. An officer of the Baseball Writers' Association of America for years, he served as chairman of the New York chapter in 1969-7. Foley's death was made known to the public by the family lawyer, Kevin Brosnahan.